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 How do 'The Cask of Amontillado' and 'The Tell-Tale Heart' reflect, or contrast with, each other?

Both of these tales have a narrator who is bent on harming another human being.  And, both narrators seem to give rather petty or ambiguous reasons as to why they are going to do that harm.  In "The Tell-Tale Heart," it is the old man's staring and vacant eye.  In "The Cask of Amontillado," is is the "thousands of injuries" and "insult" that Fortunado had given Montresor over the years.  Both narrators are telling the tale first-hand, and end with their victims' deaths.  Both narrators have unusual ways of disposing of the bodies, burying them both--one in stones, one under floorboards.  Both planned out their scheme beforehand, and took precautions to not be caught.  In "The Tell-Tale Heart" the narrator took his sweet, stealthy time in sneaking silently and undetected into the man's room.  In "The Cask of Amontillado," the narrator had the spot picked out beforehand, and commanded all of his servants to not leave the house, which ensured that they "absconded to make merry" during the festivities, so that he wouldn't have witnesses.

The differences between the stories are that the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" gets caught by the police, because of his guilty conscience that manifests itself through the beating heart.  Montresor, on the other hand, does not get caught, and lives out his days with no one knowing.  Montresor is not burdened by accusations of madness like the other narrator is; in "The Tell-Tale Heart," it seems like the entire purpose for telling the tale is to prove that he isn't insane.  Montresor, on the other hand, just seems to want to tell the tale for the tale's sake, not to prove that he is sane.  In Montresor's case there is no auditory hallucination of the beating heart to force him into confession; very little evidence of a guilty conscience is seen in Montresor.

I hope that those thoughts help to get you started; good luck!

Also both of these stories have characteristics that may or may not have happened, leading to an even greater mysterious element.

The novels are both illustrative of their Gothic nature. They both involve elements of death, darkness, horror, coldness, dampness, fear, obscurity, mystery. They give you the personal journeys of two men going from sanity to insanit, and gives you the "trainwreck" ride of a lifetime how the action picks up until the tragedy in the end.

Other elements, such as the ones mentioned in the previous posts also make them actually more similar than different, when you really look at it.

The setting is more significant and more developed in "The Cask of Amontillado." Montresor's taking Fortunato deep into the catacombs emphasizes the cruel isolation of his being buried alive. No one will hear his suffering and his screams. Also, the religious history and implications of the catacombs provide a bitter irony in the story as Fortunato is left to "Rest in Peace."